SUN VALLEY—One of the Marias looked in vain for more merchandise. The other Maria held a cork, an ordinary cork, which was the last auctionable item on the cluttered stage, unless the copious dust could be bagged. And Jason's daughter Kit certainly had revealed a knack for turning dust into gold.

“Two dollars,” Kit barked.

“Yes,” Don Victor raised a finger.

“I'll give three,” said Maria Virginia, a plump matron.

“Five,” cried Maritza, a slender young thing.

A short, portly, florid-faced man, with coarse bristles coming out of his ears, crossed the social hall and repeated, “What's going on here?” The crowd, dollar bills in hand, behaving with the rowdiness of bettors at a dog fight, suddenly subdued at the presence of the man in black. His eyes glared, his gaze darted around the emptied stage floor.

“Who is responsible?” Father Javier said.

Every piece of junk was gone, except for the rickety piano. The two Marias retreated into the stage wings. Miguel put down the gooseneck lamp he was holding as if it had turned into molten metal and singed his palms. Sonia let go of the waist of her prize, the dressmaker's dummy. It dropped to her side. Kit, in her pink-striped flannel pajamas, stepped to the front of the stage and proffered the coffee can blossoming bills. A green bouquet fell to the floor.

“Who is responsible?” the priest persisted.

Kit said in her piercing voice, now hoarse from auctioneering, “I am.”

The priest looked at her. His moon face turned from a furrowed frown to a slow smile.

“A hundred dollars!” snorted Father Javier. “For the cork.”

“A hundred dollars once. Twice. Thrice!” Kit shouted. “SOOOOLD!”

“I have wanted to clean out that stage for years,” Father Javier said. “It was a fire hazard. All that junk thrown here.”

The priest's big meaty hand, veined by coarse bristly black hairs, pushed the money into Kit's small hands.

“Keep the money for the school, child,” he said. “Don't sell the piano, whatever you do. . .”

Mr. Leonard, his eyes big under a puffy mane of dyed hair, took the can of money. “I'll put it into the padlocked cabinet. It'll be for our coffee fund.”

Class was dismissed 40 minutes early. The students left carrying their diverse prizes: a sewing machine, a case of a zweiback toast found under cables, a dirt-smudged soccer ball, a rusty egg poacher. Mr. Leonard stood and played boogie woogie on the piano. The felt hammers on the coverless instrument throbbed and jumped.

Mr. Leonard and Jason went upstairs. Kit, not to be ignored, insisted on counting the money herself. The funds totaled over $300. It was a miracle made of pennies and nickels and wrinkly smudged bills from their students' pockets.

Mr. Leonard whistled, “That'll buy a whole lot of coffee.”

Soon father and daughter were back on the freeway in a companionable silence, rocketing at speeds up to 90 miles. They were in alien terrain, the Nissan lodged between pool cleaners' pickups, limos, school buses, convertibles and 18-wheel rigs. An existential drone hovered over the treadmill roadway that ribboned infinitely under our Angeleno days. The mostly alone drivers, scowling, listening to music, putting on make-up, shoving pastrami down their gullets in the quest for speed achieved a kind of collective motionlessness; they floated together, southbound. For a moment, Dad and daughter were at peace.

Then the phone vibrated at Jason's side. It vibrated again, a second and third time. Jason was getting peeved. It was Suzanne and he chose to preemptively answer before she sent the inevitable text to clog his already clogged in-box.

“Kit's school called,” she shrilled. “Why didn't she show up at school today?”

“She's OK. I'll tell you later. I'm on the freeway,” Jason said.

He awkwardly retrieved the phone, taking his eyes off the roadway for a split second. Then the car in front suddenly stopped. Jason pumped the brake to the floor, his heart choked his throat. The Nissan skidded forward, burned rubber.

Kit shrieked. He gasped, as the car stopped three inches from the bumper in front.

“There must be a wreck,” Jason said.

As traffic froze and then slowly moved again, he perceived the culprit of the slowdown: a powder-blue 1972 Dodge creeping along at 40 miles an hour. Behind the wheel of the Dodge rode Miss Fenwick, from the night school. She had time to turn and wave effusively at Jason. There was something that made the big bad city so human when you saw a known face on the Hollywood freeway.

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